


Ordinary Guy

by bluesamutra



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode: s01e01 Pilot, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-15 12:41:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29808558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluesamutra/pseuds/bluesamutra
Summary: Missing scene from pilot
Relationships: Fox Mulder & Dana Scully, Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 1
Kudos: 24





	Ordinary Guy

* * *

Mulder eases the mud-spattered Taurus into a space in front of his new motel room and shifts the car into park, leaving the engine running. Six units over, tendrils of smoke continue to roll off the charred remains of his old room. The motel manager had not been very pleased, until Scully flashed her badge and started making noises about safety-code breaches, loss of evidence and the damage of Federal Government property. For someone so short and with no appreciable field experience, she knows how to get her point across.

His Mother, who, like all well-bred New Englanders, knows a thing or two about how to volley blame without getting her hands dirty, would have smiled approvingly and called Scully 'feisty'. He wondered what else his Mother would think about Dana Scully. Oh, she'd comment on her pretty face and her intelligence, nod approvingly at her $300,000 education and her father's reputation; but at the end of the day she'd ask pointedly, the question she already knew the answer to: 'And she's Catholic?' Scully could be a Kennedy for all the difference it would make to his Mother.

Beside him, The Feisty One shifts in her damp clothes and a waft of pine needles and wet dog raincoat plucks at his nose. Her manicured fingernail scrapes at some dried mud on the knee of her pleasingly fitted jeans.

"Mulder, what happened tonight?" she asks in a low voice, and her eyes search his face as he chews on his bottom lip.

Drumming his thumbs against the steering wheel, he turns to look at her, at the honest confusion in her face as her analytic, rational mind struggles to assimilate the facts. The facts that seem to go against everything she thought she knew was true.

Over her shoulder, the rain-slicked passenger window reflects the neon yellows and blues of the sign for 'Tony's Bar-be-cue', the gas in the 'cue' apparently nearing the end of its life as it flickers, spasmodically, against the bleak night. Mulder flips off the ignition and the car peters into near silence, the only sound the dim clicks of the engine cooling, and the quiet smeeze as Scully breathes through her nose, wide-eyed and still watching him. He lets his head fall back against the squashy headrest and tilts to look at her.

"You wanna get a drink?"

She smeezes some more, considering, and then nods slowly, a wave of still-damp hair brushing against the smooth curve of her cheek. She really is quite pretty, in a Girl Guide, obnoxious little science-geek kind of way.

He pulls the key from the ignition. "Okay then."

***

The cracked maroon leather of the barstool protests as he eases himself tiredly onto the seat, tossing his coat on top of Scully's on an empty chair. Beside him, she hooks a heel over the footrest and boosts herself into her own stool, squinting up as she does, at the surprisingly well- stocked liquor rack. Tony himself slopes over to them, drying his hands on a tatty Corona towel. Ropey muscles bulge in his forearms like snakes ready to pounce and his name is stitched in scarlet over the outline of a flattened soft-pack in his breast pocket. He tosses the thready towel aside and slides a couple of rippled Coors Lite mats onto the scuffed bar in front of them.

"What can I getcha?" he asks, gruff-voiced and leery, as strabismic brown eyes cast suspiciously between them. His eyeballs seem to hare off in different directions and Mulder isn't sure which one to look him in.

"Vodka tonic," Scully asks, before Mulder can even open his mouth, and Tony's left eye looks like he wants to ask her for ID.

"A Heineken for me, please," Mulder interjects, settling on the right eye, and Tony grunts begrudgingly and turns away to fix their drinks.

Over the crappy Walmart speakers, Tammy Wynette wails about her lack of luck in love, and at the other end of the bar, a local in a soggy red Berghaus jacket looks over with undisguised interest. Mulder considers that in Bellefleur, Oregon, population: 9,057, he and Scully stick out like sore thumbs - or Feds in a small town - and the little incident with the motel room burning down probably hasn't helped.

Tony slaps their drinks down with a complementary bowl of peanuts and Mulder grabs his beer and gulps down a welcome mouthful, before reaching for a nut.

"You know the statistics for fecal contamination of bar snacks, right?" Scully points out without taking her eyes of her own drink, a tiny line appearing between her eyes as concentrates on stabbing at the lime with her stirrer until the whole glass is pulpy and apparently fit to drink.

Mulder thinks of the summer waiting job he had at The Slug and Pellet when he was in college; about what he'd seen done to a steak that was sent back for being undercooked. With a grimace, and a silent apology to his growling stomach, he drops his hand back down on the sticky bar.

Scully takes a long drink of her cloudy vodka and turns to look at him. "Okay Mulder, what happened tonight?" she asks, repeating her earlier question. His pregnant pause elicits a roll of her eyes, "You don't seriously think that this was aliens?"

Mulder allows himself a tiny smile, "Well, what do you think took those kids, Doctor Scully?"

"Well, obviously not aliens," she informs him imperiously, and he raises his eyebrows, encouraging her to continue. "Because they don't exist," she qualifies, and he has the keen premonitory sense that he will hear those words again from her in the future. If she sticks around.

"I see," he says thoughtfully, rolling the sweaty Heineken bottle between his hands. He turns to look at her just as she tips her head back to take a long sip from her murky drink, exposing the arch of her neck, milk-white and as sleek as a cat. The thrill of a challenge sparks in his belly; at least, that's what he tells himself it is. "So, you think...?"

"Something summoned those kids into the woods; I'd be inclined to think, looking at their age, relationship, the family dynamics... that there might be some cult or cult- like involvement." Mulder stifles an amused smirk at her arrogant intelligence as she finishes her drink and signals for another round. Tony lumbers over and clears the empties, still eyeing them mistrustfully.

"'Cult-like involvement'? They teach you that in Profiling-101 at the Academy?"

Scully bristles at the inferred reminder of her inexperience and he's willing to bet a hundred bucks that the quickest way to insult Dana Scully is to question her intelligence.

"Statistics clearly show that in cases of multiple teen disappearances, when the individuals are know to one another, typically there is some kind of cult involvement: Portland, Stanton Ridge -" she lectures primly, and Mulder interrupts, continuing the list of examples.

"... Ruby River, Glasgow, Wyattstown - yeah, I know the cases too. I used to be in the VCU; I worked on Ruby River myself." He pauses while Tony sets down fresh drinks, "Those are completely different cases to what we have here. How do you explain the marks on their backs? The implants? You saw those things with your own eyes, Scully."

"As I said in Washington, those marks could be any number of things. However, given the presence of the organic substance found in the surrounding tissue, needle-punctures seems the most likely cause," she hypothesizes while stabbing her lime into submission. Raising the glass to her mouth, her lips quirk just before she takes a sip. "Occam's Razor, Mulder."

"And the fact that they disappeared on Billy Miles?"

"What do you mean? They healed, I suppose. That happens with skin wounds."

"That's your medical opinion? The marks healed overnight?" he scoffs and she shrugs her agreement, cheeks lightly flushed as the alcohol begins to take effect. "Well, what do you make of the implants?"

In the dim light of the bar, her eyes gleam, and he can see she's enjoying this as much as he is. "I admit they're strange. I need to run some tests on the one I removed from the body we exhumed... But I did remove a not- dissimilar foreign object from a cadaver once before. A man who was suffering from paranoid delusions; he believed himself to be an alien abductee who was being monitored by his captors, ultimately becoming so detached from reality that he implanted a magnet under his own skin. He thought it would stop the aliens from invading his thoughts."

"How did you know the implant wasn't extra-terrestrial in origin? That he did it to himself?"

She looks at him over the top of her glass and blinks. "Because it had the brand-name stamped on the side. Because he severed his carotid artery with a paring knife as he was implanting it."

"I admit that sounds conclusive," Mulder concedes with a smirk and they lapse into silence as they finish their drinks. He was a profiler for four years, the best the Bureau had to offer, but right now he can't get a handle on Dana Scully. The information the Gunmen had managed to pull up on her only confirmed what he already knew. Fiercely intelligent, she was an overachiever: top of her class at Stanford, Director's Leadership Award at the Academy - everything she did, she excelled at, and from what he'd gathered around the Bureau, she didn't make enemies while doing it. Dana Scully was a rare breed: capable, congenial and honorable to the core; it was no wonder the FBI had pursued her in med school. The question in his mind now though, was why they'd paired her with him? Did they really think she'd be willing to be used as a pawn?

"What are you going to write in your report?" he asks and she looks at him sharply.

"Are you asking me if I'm going to discredit the X-Files?"

"I'm asking you what you're going to write in your report."

"The truth," she snaps and then cocks her head, relenting. "Until we interview Billy Miles and I get the analysis done on the implant, I don't know. Right now, our findings are pretty inconclusive."

"I wouldn't hold your breath for a conclusive answer, Scully," he says, sounding more dejected than he means to.

Her lips curve in a smile as she roots in her coat pocket for her wallet and tosses a twenty on the bar.

"What?" he asks warily, and she casts her eyes across his face, smile growing.

"I don't know Mulder. You're not like I expected." She stands up and pulls on her jacket.

He shifts self-consciously, "What did you expect?"

Scully pauses, adjusting the collar on her coat. "Your reputation at the Academy, in VCS... I... think I was expecting someone larger than life."

Mulder's mouth snaps shut and he tries not to look offended. "I'm sorry to disappoint," he mutters, and though Scully's smile fades from her lips, her eyes are still kind.

"You don't disappoint me, Mulder."

Her tone is so open, so honest, he can't quite bring himself to voice the flip comment that jumps to his lips. Instead he just takes his coat from her outstretched hand and shrugs into it as he follows her from the bar.

"Still," he says, nudging her arm with his elbow as they walk across the frost-coated parking lot towards the motel, "It sounds a bit like my reputation is more impressive than the real thing..."

Scully sighs softly as she considers what she really means to say, and they come to a stop in front of the peeling door to her motel room. "I'd heard so many stories about you," she explains, fiddling in her pocket for her key, "I think I just built up an unrealistic image of what you'd be like...but..." She nudges his bicep with her own elbow and looks up at him with warm eyes, "You're just an ordinary guy, looking for answers to extraordinary questions."

Mulder kind of likes that image of himself, and smiles back, nodding his head softly. "Thank you," he says, squeezing her shoulder in gratitude, and then inexplicably, two-Heineken on top of jetlag inexplicably, he lets his hand rest on the firm slope of her shoulder.

Before he really has time to consider what he's doing, he's leaning down, hazy-headed to press a kiss against her cheek. That's all he means it to be, but at the last second, Scully turns her head and his lips brush against the corner of her mouth. A startled gasp escapes her lips and he freezes, mouth hovering millimeters away from hers. She stares at him, black-eyed and wild. Harsh puffs of limey breath warm his mouth and he shifts forward, or she does, and then his hot tongue is in her cold mouth.

She tastes of lime and salt, and oh, but this is a bad idea, though he can't think of any of the hundred reasons there are not to do this.

Strong, talented hands rake through his hair, scratching at his scalp and he stumbles forward, pressing her against the door and letting his own hands roam under her coat, fingers biting into her narrow waist and dragging her hips against his, and though his mind is addled, and his blood is thrumming in his veins, he feels her body stiffen against him.

"Mulder," she murmurs against his mouth, pushing on his chest, and dropping her head forward to break the kiss. Appalled at his lack of control, he gasps against the wavy hair on the top of her head and squeezes his eyes shut. Fucking idiot, he berates himself, and Scully clears her throat and continues in a low, thick voice that doesn't do anything to help calm his raging libido, "Mulder, I uh... I'm sorry. I'm.. with someone... and this... This isn't a good idea."

He lets his hands drop away from her waist and sucks in a deep, shaking breath. Forcing himself to meet her gaze, he finds her cheeks flushed with a mixture of arousal and embarrassment, and her eyes dart between his mouth and his eyes.

"You're right," he agrees at last, and is surprised by how calm his tone is. "I don't know what..." came over me, he thinks, but instead finishes, "...The work is too important." He reaches out a hand, thankfully steady, and smoothes her hair away from her face.

"Yes," she agrees in a thin voice, looking at him strangely. Then she blinks and repeats herself more firmly, "Yes, you're right.

Stepping back towards his own room two doors away, Mulder nods awkwardly, "Okay then."

"I'll see you in the morning, Mulder." He analyzes her voice for malice or disappointment and finds none, and he isn't sure if that reassures him or unsettles him. He shoves his key in the lock, and the flimsy door swings open before him, a waft of mildewed air escaping.

"Scully, I -" he starts and she looks at him questioningly, fingers still curled around her room key. "Sorry."

She smiles, pushing her door open, and glancing over her shoulder at him, "Don't be."

With the taste of lime lingering in his mouth, he smiles back as she closes her door softly, almost pointedly so, and leaves him on the frost-slick porch, under a night sky bright with stars. He knows it will be a long time before he kisses Dana Scully again. 


End file.
